"In Halo: Cryptum, Greg Bear began a three-book arc set in the era of the Forerunners, the ancient and enigmatic creators and builders of the Halos, which continued in Halo: Primordium. Now, in the last years of the Forerunner empire, chaos rules. The Flood—a horrifying shape-changing parasite—has arrived in force, aided by unexpected allies. Internal strife within the ecumene has desperately weakened Forerunner defenses.

Only the Ur-Didact and the Librarian—a husband and wife pushed into desperate conflict—hold the keys to salvation. Facing the consequences of a mythic tragedy, one of them must now commit the greatest atrocity of all time—to prevent an unmatched evil from dominating the entire universe."

It mentions the "Ur-Didact", which is a prefix meaning first, original. A bit odd considering that last we knew, the born-didact was the one chilling with the librarian.

Looks like the cryptum is on the cover, and judging by the ceiling spire, it's on requiem.

Yeah the mention of "Ur-Didact" was interesting to me. It makes me wonder what role Bornstellar/Didact is going to play, since the summary suggests that the Didact of the Halo 3 terminals is in fact the same one as this guy.

How do you know that its german? Forerunner's dont have the german language. It could just be a cool sounding prefix-syllable and they will give us the definition in forerunner culture in the book

And yes i know what Ur was. Thats where abraham was from i believe

That's true but I think it's more likely it's the prefix. The books like the Terminals have been presented as translations with idiomatic interpretations--such as Eden, etc. It'd be interesting to think about what a Forerunner concept of paradise looks like, though.

Well i mean... that point actually supports a point that no one made; if we go with the tradition of halo--forerunner names for things having tons of biblical references (ark, flood, eden, ark... etc) then Ur actually fits right in

On a serious note though, the terminals have presented translations with idiomatic interpretations, that are translated into English... Eden is part of the "English" language... ur- really isnt...

Im not saying you are wrong, cause odds are, you are correct I feel, but your evidence is shakey at best

Well i mean... that point actually supports a point that no one made; if we go with the tradition of halo--forerunner names for things having tons of biblical references (ark, flood, eden, ark... etc) then Ur actually fits right in

On a serious note though, the terminals have presented translations with idiomatic interpretations, that are translated into English... Eden is part of the "English" language... ur- really isnt...

Im not saying you are wrong, cause odds are, you are correct I feel, but your evidence is shakey at best

Eh, I'd say "Ur" is enough of a loan into English--it's like the perennially overused "uber". After all, we've got Prometheans (Προμηθεύς) and the Didact (διδακτικός), and while the roots of our language are Germanic we've tended to adopt Romance terms for a lot of our "nicer" words. Hell, most of our more elevated terms date from the Norman conquest, while more household or base words remained from the Saxons.

ANYWHO; i cannot, for the life of me, think of ANY words that begin with ur-... And i dont think its fair to say that a figure of language is "basically on loan to English" when it is never used

EDIT: looked it up: these are the words derived from the germanic prefix ur- :urelementur-formur-Hamlet ur-mythur-poemurtext

Have you ever heard of or used any of those 6 words?So yeah, not really "Common-English"

And furthermore, had they chosen ur-, ir-, uz-, udz- , oer-, or- people would still have drawn the same conclusions, freaking out about how it must mean his, when, in reality, it could have just been 2 letters that they liked how it sounded, and so they were gonna make it mean something in "Forerunner"

And in Greek, the prefix ur- means Relating to Urine. Im not gonna draw any conclusins

Is it really rebranding so much as an easy way to differentiate one didact form another?

I thought Bornstellar and Didact were an easy way to differentiate them.... you don't assume one's name through a brevet mutation, just their knowledge, and memories right?

I got the sense that brevet mutations were generally a bit less... total in their transferrence. As he says in Primordium, he's Bornstellar now "only in my dreams". Most mutations aren't supposed to suppress the original identity--I think the Didact pulled some extra mojo-transferrence in the likely case he'd be killed.

Since he evidently *wasn't* killed, I wonder where he is. If Faber had him on Installation 07 I'm sure they would have found him by the end of Primordium.

If that is the case, I think the Silentium will be told from the viewpoint of neo-didact. Why else would there need to be that distinction if it was told from someone else like chakas or riser? Even chakas said in primordium that he wonders where bornstellar was, he didn't use didact with some prefix. I suppose it could also be told from the librarians point of view trying to distinguish between her two husbands I guess (the origin of polygamy comes from the forerunners ).

But I still think it will be told from bornstellar/neo-didact's point of view. Since primordium was about what happened to chakas after being captured by Faber, I think it only makes sense for the next book to focus on what happened to neo-didact after being captured by Faber. Maybe he teams up with ur-didact at some point and that's why there needs to be a distinction between the two. Anyone want to place a wager on neo-didact being killed off in silentium?